The banjo is a product of Africa

The banjo is a product of Africa

The banjo is a product of Africa. Africans transported to the Caribbean and Latin America were reported playing banjos in the 17th and 18th centuries, before any banjo was reported in the Americas. Africans in the US were the predominant players of this instrument until the 1840s. Originally the banjos were made out of gourds and skins. The strings numbered between three and nine, with four- and five-string banjos being popular. A distinguishing feature was one or more short drone strings sounded with the thumb.

Banjo playing became an object of popular white culture in the US and later in Britain as a result of the Blackface Minstrel shows that became a popular form of entertainment in the 1830s and 1840s. Minstrels from the South who had actually learned real African-American music like Joel Sweeney popularized the banjo by introducing the clawhammer or frailing style that Blacks had brought from Africa. Commercial banjo makers later claimed that Sweeney invented the banjo in order to cover up its African origin. Sweeney did work with luthiers and drum makers to help perfect drum head banjos, the most common type, and is thought to have popularized the five-string banjo as opposed to the four-string banjo. Banjo playing became widely popular among working class and poor people both urban and rural. While African Americans continued their tradition with the instrument, whites also became fans, makers and manufacturers of the banjo.

The once ignored music of traditional African-American five-string banjoists from Piedmont areas of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia began to be heard again in the collection and performance of banjoists like Dink Roberts, John Snipes, and Odell Thompson. The publication of Dr. Cece Conway’s African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia: A Study of Folk Traditions linked these players to the African origins of the banjo as well as to the African origins of clawhammer and other traditional banjo styles among white old-time players. The issue by Dr. Conway and Scott Odell of Black Banjo Songsters of North Carolina & Virginia, a CD of these Black banjoists’ music, brought the original Black voice of the five-string banjo back to the banjo world. These events helped encourage a layer of African-Americans to take up the banjo and continue and expand the traditions of their elders.